Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [130]
Luke faced the young Imperial medic. “Right,” he said, rubbing his forehead. Here we go again.
“Come on, Junior.” Han leaned against a bulkhead. “Let’s use this doc while we’ve got him.”
Luke let them lead him to a bunk. He drew a careful breath and lay down to have his leg and lungs scanned.
It was a good thing Thanas and his garrison didn’t know that the Dominant was really no threat to Salis D’aar. Its new “crew” consisted of two excited Calamarian youngsters—two who hadn’t come down for shore leave.
Rank by rank, a thousand Imperial personnel boarded a large but ancient Bakuran space liner under Commander Pter Thanas’s eyes. Bakura wanted the Empire gone. The announcement had come yesterday, two hours after Nereus’s death. Over half his men weren’t even there to ship out. Some had never straggled in, dead or deserted. Others had vanished last night: Skywalker’s people were keeping his promise, no doubt. Most of Thanas’s ranking officers led the formation, but he noted the absence of two medical supervisors and the weather officer. All remaining Imperial war materiel—right down to the stormtroopers’ armor—must be left to the Bakurans, forming the nucleus of their new home defense force. Units of that force would soon join the Rebel fleet.
There weren’t many TIE fighters left for Bakura to use, though, after the Ssi-ruuk and then the Rebels decimated them. That concerned him.
Two Bakuran guards, the only armed men in sight—no, one was a woman—stood behind him. At last the final unit boarded. “Ramp, up,” Thanas called in crisp military singsong.
He continued to stand on the ground, at attention. The Bakurans’ stares burned his back. Inside the cockpit window, an experienced Imperial war pilot craned his head. Thanas saluted him, then signaled with one hand for liftoff. He backed away.
Engines ignited. He kept backing, as did the Bakuran guards. The liner lifted and began a slow turn.
Free … perhaps. Pter Thanas reached left-handed into his pocket. He held his salute while his hand closed on something small and hard. One Bakuran dropped to a firing crouch.
Smoothly Thanas drew out his pearl-handled folding knife. Ignoring the guard, he tucked his chin to his chest and sliced the red and blue rank insignia from his uniform. He pulled it off by one corner and dropped it into a pocket.
Then he turned to the crouching guard. “Sir,” he said, “take me to Prime Minister Captison. If you mean to refit a Carrack-class cruiser for service, you need experienced advice. I know that cruiser.”
The Bakuran lowered his Imperial blaster rifle. “Under the Alliance, sir?”
Thanas nodded. “That’s right, soldier. Under the Alliance. I’m defecting.”
“Uh, yessir. Follow me.”
Thanas followed at a quick march to a Bakuran landspeeder.
One TIE fighter went to the Alliance as booty. Commander Luke Skywalker pulled rank and got the shuttle mission … with the medic’s reluctant approval.
Approaching the captured Ssi-ruuvi cruiser, newly repaired and rechristened Sibwarra (though its small Alliance crew called it the Fluite, and he suspected that was the name that would stick), he gripped the controls through the gloves of a full vacuum suit. Compared with an X-wing, this was like riding an unshielded cargo box. It turned and accelerated like a terrified womp rat, but it wobbled, unstable in every vector plane.
It wasn’t just his lifelong urge to fly a TIE fighter—once—that had driven him to request this mission. He must return to that Ssi-ruuvi bridge for a final glimpse. He felt as if the odor of darkness still clung to him, he’d come so close to falling. How many times must he renounce the darkness? As he grew in power and knowledge, would temptation beckon again and again?
Gingerly he docked the fighter in a vast Ssi-ruuvi hangar bay, perhaps the same one where Han had landed the Falcon to rescue him. The Bakuran replacement crew would surrender it to a Rebel pilot for transport to the Fleet, eventually,